Cubase Program Overview
The Cubase program is positioned by the developers as a full-fledged digital audio station, providing users with the widest opportunities for any of the criteria of the process of creating, recording, and mixing music.
Audio Editor
The first thing that is commonly interested in novice users of digital audio stations is audio editing tools. Cubase has a large number of them. For example:
- VariAudio is a vocal correction tool. The program analyzes the file with vocals downloaded by the user, automatically divides it into segments, and displays them in the form of midi messages. Further, the user can perform on these segments of vocals all the actions that can be applied to ordinary notes – adjust the duration, pitch, and much more.
- Group (simultaneous) quantization of MIDI parts and processing of audio tracks.
- Adjust the duration and tempo of the audio without changing the key.
- A feature-rich sample editor that provides virtually limitless audio editing possibilities.
Composition Tools
As an audio station, Cubase provides users with a huge opportunity to compose musical compositions of any complexity, for example:
- The Chord Pads instrument is a full-fledged digital replacement for the MIDI keyboard for composing music with many possibilities.
- The built-in music editor provides musicians with a powerful tool for working with musical text. Allows you to create and edit musical compositions of any complexity, up to scores for choirs, ensembles, and orchestras.
- A wide range of non-linear arranger functions and tools.
- Rich tools for changing the tempo of the music, editing the movement of individual parts of the composition along the timeline, and much more.
Virtual Instruments.
Cubase virtualizes various musical instruments:
- Groove Agent is a virtual full-fledged drum kit with a huge library of samples, grooves, and patterns, a virtual mixer, and an FX package.
- Halion Sonic SE 3 is a universal synthesizer with a large number of effects and a library of samples.
- Retrologue 2 is a virtual version of the analog synthesizer with three analog generators, many filters, an adaptable arpeggiator, a powerful modulation system, and an FX rack.
- And others.
Sound Recording
Naturally, Cubase has a lot of features related to sound recording. Here’s a small part of them:
- Control Room is a multifunctional sound recording module that allows you to create a virtual environment for recording sound.
- Ample possibilities for recording sound from any MIDI device.
- Ability to create your own metronome templates with four different accent levels and upload your own click sounds.
- Etc.
Mixing
Cubase MixConsole, a feature-rich mixing console that has a user-friendly interface and is optimized for working without a mouse (almost all elements are controlled from the keyboard), provides all the necessary tools for mixing compositions.
Sets of views and channel zones, customizable track icons, a flexible track manager, drag and drop and search plug-ins, quickly call up all sorts of audio/MIDI processing tools – these and many other features make Cubase MixConsole one of the world’s best mixing consoles.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
How Do I Set Up My Sound Card In Cubase?
Before setting up your sound card settings, you first need to choose which audio playback device Cubase will use:
- Open the “Devices” menu at the top of the program window, then select “Device Setup…” (Hardware Configuration).
- In the window that opens, go to the “VST Audio System” section.
- At the very top of the partition window in the drop-down menu, you need to select “ASIO-Driver”. This driver is usually installed on your computer along with Cubase. Select the driver containing “ASIO” in the name from the list.
Next, you can move on to fine-tuning the audio:
- Immediately after installing the driver, various settings of the audio driver parameters will be displayed below: input/output delay (Latency), sample rate (Sample Rate), processing precision (Processing Precision), and many others. You can change these settings or reset them by clicking Set to default.
- Also, after selecting the ASIO driver, a subsection will appear in the “VST Audio System” section with the name of the selected playback device (driver).
- In this subsection, you can view the status of the input and output ports of your audio card, and if necessary, activate/deactivate them.
How Do I Record Sound From A Microphone At Cubase?
Sound recording from a microphone in Cubase is carried out directly into one of the audio tracks created within the framework of the project:
- Right-click on the part of the stage where the audio tracks are listed, then select “Add Audio Track” from the drop-down menu.
- A new window will open. Next to the “Audio Input” parameter in the drop-down list, you need to select the name of the microphone you are using. If it is a simple single-channel microphone, set the Configuration option to Mono. If the microphone is dual-channel, set “Stereo”.
- Click on the “Add Track” button.
- In the list of tracks in the project, a panel with buttons for controlling sound recording is displayed. You can turn the recording on/off an unlimited number of times. In this case, each record will be added to the project as a separate track.
How To Save The Sound To Mp3 In Cubase?
To export a finished music project to MP3 format, perform the following actions:
- Select all or part of the track on the Stage.
- Next, open the “File” menu, in it – the submenu “Export”, then “Audio Mixdown”.
- On the right side of the window that appears, you can select the format of the file to save. Since we need MP3, set the appropriate value in the “File Format” list.
- Above in the “Name” block, specify the name of your file, in the “Path” block, set the path to the folder where the composition will be exported, then click “Export”.
How Do I Remove The Right Pane In Cubase?
If we are talking about the panel “VST Instruments” (VST Tools), then you can enable/disable its display from the “Studio” menu by checking/unchecking the item “VST Instruments/ VST Tools”. You can also use the F11 hotkey or the “Alt + T” combination (depending on the Cubase version).
How Does Cubase Export Each Track As A Separate Audio File?
To export audio tracks from Cubase individually, follow these steps:
- Open “File” > “Export” > “Audio Mixdown”.
- Open the “Audio Channels” tab in the export window.
- Check the boxes next to each track. • Click “Export”: all tracks will be saved individually in the selected format.
